


Forget me not

by i_gaze_at_scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Smut, F/M, One Night Stands, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:26:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: From a trope/au mashup prompt list on tumblr, prompt from @alabama-metal-man. Forgotten meeting/Bar or restaurant mashup. Scully is graduating from Maryland and runs into an old classmate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut ahead!

One last hurrah. She’s done with undergrad, on her way to medical school, chapters closing and doors opening and friends leaving. She wants to drink, to dance, to celebrate.

Brady’s. Night before graduation. Her roommates, classmates, friends, seems like the whole damn college is there tonight. It’s perfect. Kayla elbows her way through the crowd to the bar as their designated drink-getter; she has the biggest tits, and it’s a college bar. Works every time, especially if she’s wearing that top that zippers in the front. She comes back with a round of shots. Tequila, Dana’s favorite. 

“Cheers, my dears!” Kayla exclaims. “There are good ships, and there are wood ships–” She starts, till Olivia cuts her off.

“Oh shut the fuck up and take your shot already!” Unceremoniously, she downs hers, and Dana remembers why they hit it off in the first place. She loves these people. As everyone laughs and catches up and Kayla jabs Olivia in the side, Dana realizes with a twang that this is it. Kayla is headed back to Ohio to work as a dental assistant until she can afford dental school. Olivia is off to medical school like Dana, but way out in Seattle. Jane, her freshman roommate and closest friend, her ride or die since day one, decided to spend a year in Japan teaching English in underserved schools. Dana couldn’t be happier for her, but staying in touch with someone who lives in Japan isn’t an easy feat, and it burns worse than the tequila to think that this is their last night together. 

“Another one!” Dana shouts, and there are no dissenters. 

As shots go down smooth and fast, the music blares in her ears and she brings her friends to the dance floor, singing loudly and badly and unabashedly. She stops the shots and opts for a gin and tonic, the rational part of her brain reminding her that she  _does_  have to walk across that stage tomorrow and sure doesn’t want to do it in sunglasses. 

People start to peter out slowly, then all at once as if everyone collectively realized graduation was really tomorrow. Some left with their arms around one another, singing Maryland’s victory song. One group even touted a flag around their shoulders. Her friends live too far away to share a cab, and at some point, Dana decides to leave. She wants to end on a high note, and if she stays, that might not happen. With one big group hug and promises to find each other after the ceremony tomorrow, she steps out of the bar into the muggy Maryland air. Before she can get three feet out of the bar though, someone calls her name. She turns around to see him half stumble towards her, all gangly and smiley.

“Hey Dana!” He knows her, but she doesn’t know him, and her meek  _hey_  tips him off. “Fox Mulder, we met in Holt’s psych class a few years ago.” She smiles at him and is genuinely embarrassed to have zero recollection of him. Especially because he’s so  _freaking_ attractive, holy hell. Her head spins for a second when he steps closer and she knows it’s a little more than the alcohol. 

“I’m not offended,” he assures her. “What’ve you been up to since? Are you walking tomorrow?” She tells him she is, he tells her he figured, tells her he’d graduated the semester after that class but his buddies were a few years behind and he was celebrating with them tonight.

“Where’d they go?” She asks.

“I actually have no idea,” he says with a big smile, slightly out of place but overwhelmingly charming. “They can be pretty eccentric, with a tendency to just… vanish.” 

“Speaking of, actually,” she segues. “I do have to get home. Graduation and all.” She gesticulates with an uncoordinated twirl of her wrist. 

“Yeah, that.”

A long moment hovers and passes, and she nods a goodbye. 

“Nice to see you again,” she says, but he catches her wrist gently, with two fingers. She looks down at them and back up to him and that big smile.

“Can I walk you home?” He asks, and for some reason, she says yes.

It was her freshman year, Holt’s class. The sad in her stomach intensifies, even as Fox––Mulder, he asked her to call him––chats amicably by her side on the walk home. It was a lifetime ago, three years. She was a different person then; that’s why she doesn’t remember Mulder, she reasons. Life just… god it’s so fast, things just happen so fast. Her head spins again with the absurdity of it all, that one day she’s nervously tucking her hair behind her ears in her first biology class, pulling all nighters at the library and crashing parties on frat row, and the next day a near perfect stranger is walking her home on the eve of her graduation.  _Graduation._ She isn’t ready for it to end. They get to her door so fast and she doesn’t want any of it to end.

When they reach her narrow walkway, he steps closer to her, guiding her forward with a hand placed lightly, unassumingly, at the small of her back. But when they reach her door, she pulls him in by the collar of his shirt and kisses some of the pain away. She’s fumbling to get her keys out of her purse with his lips on her jaw, her neck, as her hips shift to him of their own accord. He has her backed against the door and she pivots to open it, and suddenly they’re catapulted into the darkness of her living room as one, hands flying from cheeks to necks to arms and sides. 

He pulls her not towards the couch, but towards the kitchen. Hoists her up on the counter and presses her into it with his hips. She feels him there, hard and ready, and his breath is hot in her ear, and her head is straining against the cabinets, and she just wants more. She drags her nails down his back and pulls his lower lip between her teeth. He gets on his knees in front of her and she nearly passes out from the raw desire and anticipation. Her skirt is around her hips, her underwear nudged aside, and his tongue–

“ _Fuck,”_ she breathes in increments, gasping around the word and writhing and losing herself in whatever the hell it is he’s doing with his mouth. He finds her clit, presses down with the flat of his tongue, and while her head’s thrown back, he slips two fingers into her and she cries out, sure that he’s going to kill her dead, right here on her kitchen counter. When it’s too much to take and she feels herself building, building, she latches her fingers into his hair and holds him in place until she crumbles, until she’s undone and there’s a universe of stars behind her eyes. She’s laughing, it hit so hard and felt so good that she actually exhales a breathy laugh coming down. He chuckles too, flashing that big smile again.

“Not usually the reaction I–” She cuts him off with her tongue down his throat, pushing him back till she’s off the counter and on the couch. She changes her mind though, because there are no condoms here, and if she doesn’t have him inside her right now she thinks she might lose her mind.

“Bedroom,” she barks. “Now.” Once again, there are no dissenters. 

“Yes ma’am.”

She all but throws the condom at him and he’s still fully clothed. Now he laughs, clearly amused by her haste, but also from the way his cock springs from his boxers when he pulls them down, clearly turned on. 

She licks her lips.

He hovers above her, button down open and a flop of hair falling into his forehead. Her skirt already at her hips, she reaches down and slides her shirt over her head. He takes a long minute to admire her bra, her breasts, cupping one in his hand and kneading deliciously before looking back at her. He holds the condom up in a silent question, a final permission, and she nods vigorously. 

When he’s hip deep and perfectly still, she is perfectly full, her head slamming into the pillow with a sigh. She lifts her hips in encouragement, and he moves, slow at first till the sound of her moans spurs him on. She closes her eyes and arches her back, digs her heels into his ass, runs her hands across his shoulder blades. When she opens her eyes, he’s still looking at her, hooded eyelids and parted mouth. When he reaches between them and thumbs her clit she slams her eyes shut again and it doesn’t take much more for her to come, shouting profanities to her ceiling and all of College Park, for all she cared. She was leaving anyway. 

He finished not long after with a grunt and his own string of profanities, lower, under his breath. He collapses next to her and almost immediately props himself on his elbow before she’s even caught her breath.

“Goddamn,” is all he says, but he says it almost reverently, and she chuffs out a laugh.

“Before you ask, yes, that good for me,” she teases. He lays back down with a dry  _hah hah_ and an oomf. 

The drunkenness and post-orgasm fog settle in fast and hard, and before she can get up to pee or decide if she wants to ask him to leave, she falls asleep. The last thing she remembers is his hand ghosting over hers and settling next to it, pinkies linked.

When she wakes up, he is still there. As is a massive headache. And a pang of regret, or shame at the least. But then she looks over at him, sleeping soundly and endearingly in a stranger’s home, and it makes her smile in spite of herself. She glances at the clock and  _panics._

 _“Shit,”_ she hisses, jumping out of bed and accidentally rousing Mulder. She has 20 minutes to make herself look graduation worthy and get to the stadium.  _Shit shit shit_. 

She forgoes coffee and grabs a plain bagel to eat on the way over. Her graduation dress is white, her cap and gown yellow, her gold cross glinting on her neck. Rushed as she is, she stops to look in the mirror and realizes not for the first time how much she’s changed in these four years. 

She isn’t startled by Mulder’s reflection behind her. He’s sweet, ducking his head to rest his chin on her shoulder. 

“Congrats, grad,” he whispers, and plants a chaste kiss under her earlobe that still sends a shiver down her spine. He retreats to get dressed as she puts the final touches into her hair and makeup. 

“So, uh…” she stutters as she heads for the door. “I have to––” 

“I know. Do me a favor though?” He asks, stepping towards her and wrapping her in a loose embrace, face to face. “Try not to forget me this time?” He kisses her in full, slow and long, and then moves his hands to her hips and kisses her forehead. 

All she can do is nod and swallow back the butterflies creeping from her stomach into her throat. She steps into the early morning sunshine, into a new chapter of her life, with her head held high.

She won’t forget this time. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana Scully leaves Maryland for med school and falls in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow burn folks. It's a slowwww burn. Scully/Daniel Waterston, follows canon.

She never got his number or his address, nothing. It bothers her for a couple of weeks, mostly on the long plane ride back to California. After all the caps were tossed, the families hugged, the mixed emotion tears shed, she packed up her whole life in Maryland and sent it back home to California. Stanford would be different, though, than San Diego. She fiddled with her cross and told herself that if God wanted them to meet again, then they would. She had faith.

Medical school drives all other thoughts from her mind though, including Fox Mulder. She throws herself into her studies, living on coffee, naps in the library, and once (though she isn’t proud of it) some Ritalin from a friend. She’s managing.

She is fiercely determined to set herself apart, to prove her worth in a class full of men who either look down on her or ogle her. No matter how tired she is, she keeps her back ramrod straight, her attention trained on whomever was speaking, ears and eyes and mind open. She has a great working relationship with her cohort, but nothing beyond that. There’s just no time, or at least no energy; med school is rapidly draining her, and more than just physically. She longs for connection, for her friends, her sister (and yes, sometimes, even her brothers). And even beyond that, she is already, far too early, becoming disenchanted with the idea of working in a hospital, something she’d been adamant about just a year before. She feels much more at home in the lab.

In her third year, she begins rotations, has her fair share of “Nurse, can you grab––” corrections, plenty of wolf whistles when she changes scrubs in the locker room. Worst of all, she’s not yet had a single clinical instructor take her seriously. It’s almost enough to break her, but she refuses to quit.

And then there is Dr. Daniel Waterston. 

The attraction is immediate, a fire burning all through her, something she cannot shake. To avoid making a fool of herself, she tries for the first time not to stand out. She does her work quietly, and excellently, and she forces herself to focus on her instructor as just that, and nothing more.

She tries not to read into the way he stares directly at her when he speaks in rounds, and she slips quietly past him in the crowd of students as soon as they’re dismissed. He’s brilliant, she knows, and assertive, and handsome, and so  _sure_. But she will _not_  become a cliche. She will not go to his office hours and sit on his desk, she will not let herself become attached in any way but professionally.

“Dana,” he calls after rounds one day, his eyes on his clipboard. It’s the first time he’s actually said her name and it sends chills down her spine like she’s a goddamn teenager. Like it’s the first time a boy whispered her name in her ear with his hand up her shirt in the back of his Chevy. She is 24 years old and she tries to act like it.

“Dr. Waterston?”

He lifts his eyes from his clipboard and they’re just incredible. Blue, gray, swirling, unimaginably intelligent. She holds his gaze.

“Have you decided on where you’ll apply for a residency yet?”

“Actually, yes. I know it’s early still, but––”

“It is,” he interrupts, and she braces herself for another lecture or other sanctimonious bullshit. “But what do you have your eye on?”

“Pathology,” she answers confidently. It’s her way of following her passion for medicine, for serving and helping, while being able to stay in the lab, where she thrives. She’s already written the essay and plans to start the application soon, early as it is.

“You have an incredible eye for diagnostics, Dana. I’ve seen your work and moreover, I’ve seen the passion you have for people. Have you ever considered going into diagnostic medicine?”

She’s floored and flattered, her mind swirling with unexpected second guesses.

“Not as of yet, no. Honestly, I don’t know much about it.”

He nods solemnly and takes out a business card. She has his information through the university, so she’s confused for a moment, but when she turns it over, she sees he’s written his personal number.

“I really think you should consider changing paths,” he urges as she meets his eye again. “I have a background in diagnostics myself and would love to give you more information about it, see if I can sway you.” He smiles then, something she’s not seen from Dr. Waterston the instructor, and she smiles too, a chink in her armor.  

“I’ll take it under consideration,” she promises, sticking the card in the breast pocket of her scrubs.

“You have my card,” he asserts, and if you blinked you would have missed it, but she could’ve sworn he winked before turning and walking away.

—

Ears and eyes and mind open, she calls him. After a whole weekend of pacing, debating, and doubting, she calls him. At the very least, she  _should_  consider other options. Maybe she was being too stubborn. She could learn a lot from this man. She calls him, and he offers to explain the details of diagnostics over dinner, and she accepts.

And that’s the beginning and the end of everything.

She is infatuated, enamored, hooked. He’s intoxicating, pouring her wine as they pour over medical journals in her crappy one bedroom; his hand makes its way agonizingly slowly up her thigh as the night goes on until the journals are on the floor and she’s got carpet burn on her knees. He’s whisking her away to Napa for the weekend, sending flowers to her apartment, making out with her in the on-call room (and in his office and on the beach with the wind in her hair and the sun on her face).

He tells her he loves her less than two months in, and she tells him she loves him back. She’s never been in love before.

It’s heaven, but reality slaps her in the face like a bucket of ice water, like been woken from a deep sleep by the blare of a siren.

She is in the locker room, stopping to grab some water, when she overhears two of the residents on her floor talking in hushed voices.

“You know that redhead, I think her name is Scully? She’s sleeping with Waterston.”

“You’re kidding! She’s like… seven.”

“I know, he could be her father, easily.”

“Wasn’t he her instructor like, a month ago?”

“Yep.”

“…And married?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus, what a slut.”

_Married._

Dana’s heart drops like a stone into her stomach. She braces herself on the locker for support as her knees buckle. They leave, thank God, and Dana collapses onto the bench with her head in her hands.

She ignores his calls for a week. Holes herself up in her apartment with the biggest box of chocolate she can find and three bottles of wine and constant music, any music. Anything to interrupt the deafening silence.

_This is why you never stayed at his place, never even went to his place. This is why he calls you so late at night. How could you be so stupid?_

She buries her face in a pillow and sobs. A knock at the door startles her, and she won’t answer.

“Dana, it’s me, please answer the door.” His voice is like honey and she hates herself all over again.

“Go away,” she replies, petulant and small, hurt and alone.

“Dana, we need to talk. You need to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me. You’re hurting me, Dana.” She closes her eyes and shoves her hands over her ears to block him out.  _You’re hurting him, you love him and you’re hurting him._

“Let me in, Dana.” Assertive, authoritative, everything she loves about him. Fuck.

“You’re  _married_!!” She screams at the door, and that seems to shut him up.

“Please let me in,” he says, softer this time. “Please, Dana.”

She lugs herself off the couch, opens the door and tries, tries not to cave, but when she sees him she breaks down and throws herself into his arms. She’s missed him so much.

“Daniel,” she cries into his chest. “You’re, you can’t be, I don’t…” And then the feeling of his hands on her back is too much, his scent is too much, his soothing whispers are too much, and she shoves him back.

“You’re married, damn you! You lied to me! You told me you loved me and you  _lied_ , you  _bastard_!” She’s pounding on his chest and he’s letting her, taking it as she takes her anger out on him. She tires, collapses into him again, lets him have his turn despite her better judgment.

“I would never lie to you, Dana.” Every time he says her name she falls again and she hates herself, over and over and over. “I do love you. My marriage, oh god Dana it’s been over for years. I don’t even wear a ring.”

“Yeah,” she chuffs, “I noticed.”

“Dana…”

“Stop it! Stop saying my name!” She backs away again, this time back to the couch, but he follows her. She wishes they were sitting on her couch a week ago, with wine, with JAMA, with soft music and candlelight.

“Okay, okay, shh, calm down.” She lets him touch her because she needs it. He pulls her towards him so she can rest her head on his shoulder. “I understand that you’re upset. I never wanted to hurt you. You mean so much to me, I couldn’t live without you, you don’t understand.”

Her tears are hot on his shirt and she’s trying to keep the snot in. Any anger has completely dissipated.

“Please,” he implores, cupping her chin and tilting her face towards him. “Stay with me.”

And she almost, almost does.

“I can’t… I can’t be a homewrecker Daniel.”

“The home is already beyond wrecked––”

“Daniel, please––”

“ _Dana_.” He raises his voice and her heart jumps in her chest. He stands abruptly, throwing her off balance. “You can’t leave. You need me. I won’t, I can’t let you, you’re  _not_  leaving.” He grabs her shoulders and for the first time, she finds herself afraid of this man, the first man she’s ever really loved.

“Okay,” is all she says. “But you have to tell your wife.” Her voice is small and it wavers, but she’s sure. And she thinks, she hopes, he sees it in her eyes. He nods, and then he leaves without saying another word.

—

To her knowledge, Daniel never tells his wife.

Her last year in medical school is a blur. Learning of Daniel’s wife, she exercised what little control she had in their relationship, in her life, and applied for the pathology residency. He wasn’t happy about it, lectured her about wasted talent, but did an about face shortly after with flowers and told her she was going to be such an amazing pathologist. She was going to do a lot of good.  _Not as much good as a diagnostic doctor_ , he implied, but never said it aloud again.

When the FBI came to Stanford, she felt for the first time in four years like something was calling her. She looked into the eyes of the one of the recruiters and the woman just radiated assurance, dedication, passion. You could tell she loved her job. That she really did want the brilliant minds of Stanford Medical to join her in the fight for justice. And she convinced Dana easily. Because that, Dana realized, is what had been missing this whole time: purpose. She’d been lost, bombarded by the possibilities and the harsh realities, her foundation ripped out from under her, her compass stolen. But now, shaking hands with the recruiters, she feels solid ground beneath her feet, and it makes her want to run with it.

Sex becomes perfunctory after that. She doesn’t want to soar with Daniel anymore, she needs to feel grounded. She finds herself jaded, pulling away, until one day, they’re sitting across from each other in her kitchen and she tells him point blank.

“I’ve accepted a position at the FBI. I’m moving to Washington, D.C. in a month.”

His fork clangs to the table, a storm passes through his eyes, but this time she feels no fear.

“I’ve made my decision, Daniel. Don’t try to change my mind.”

—

But he does, god damn him. In the coming days, he tries everything. Her apartment is full of flowers and her clit is always sore and her ears ring with the words he hurls at her like knives some nights. Words like  _coward_ , words like  _if you loved me_. She reminds him that he hasn’t told his wife about them yet, and it always shuts him up, and she’s stopped feeling badly about pulling that card. She’s seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

At the end of the day though, she still loves him. It isn’t that easy, it isn’t as cut and dry as she’d like it to be. The last time she sees him, they are wrapped in each other’s arms in her bed. They are surrounded by boxes, empty closets, a single lamp. Her head is on his chest, her favorite way to be held, and he smooths her hair down rhythmically.

“You have changed me, Dana Scully. I will always love you. I hope you know that.” He whispers it into her hair and she can tell even without seeing that he is holding back tears.

She lets herself cry. She holds his face when he leaves one last time.

And then he’s gone.

—

She feels ready this time. On the plane, she flashes back to the last time she took this trip, but in the opposite direction. She hasn’t been back to the DMV, or to the East Coast at all, since graduation. She remembers the pit in her stomach, thinking about leaving everything behind to go to medical school, felt that it was such a forced ending, one that no one had wanted. She remembers thinking how much she’d grown in her four years at Maryland that morning of graduation, and she now knows that it doesn’t hold a candle to how much she’s grown in the four years since that day.

And then she remembers Fox Mulder, her forget-me-not. A smile creeps over her face as she pictures his goofy grin and soft lips. She decides that when she gets to Washington, she’s going to look him up.


End file.
